After months of protests, multiple million-man marches, and more than a thousand arrests, Chief Executive Carrie Lam is expected to formally withdraw the controversial extradition bill that first gave rise to Hong Kong’s summer of unrest this afternoon, according to media reports.
HK01 and the SCMP, both citing anonymous sources, have reported that Lam is expected to meet with her pro-Beijing allies to announce the decision at 4pm. Reuters, meanwhile, has reported that an unnamed government source verified the reports.
“This gesture to formally withdraw is a bid to cool down the atmosphere,” one source told the SCMP.
The bill, first announced in response to a legally thorny murder case that took place in Taiwan, would have allowed extradition from the city to the mainland to face trial, sparking widespread fears that Hongkongers could find themselves at the mercy of China’s opaque, politicized courts. In June, as many as two million people participated in a march against the bill, which drew fierce criticism from an unprecedented broad cross-section of society.
However, in spite of repeated and increasingly violent protests, the government has resisted formally withdrawing the bill, instead only suspending its progress in the Legislative Council.
The refusal to withdraw it outright allowed the protest movement to expand into a call not only for the bill to be scrapped, but also for universal suffrage in choosing the city’s leaders, among other things.
NOTE: This story has been updated to include a subsequent report from Reuters.
